Saturday, January 10, 2009

Freebies are born of Choice

Check out the Dot Lane, Girl Reporter post (Web) about why the Grid has so many Freebies. She explores some pretty high concepts such as definition of self, market forces, the de-evolution of prize hunts, what our money is really worth, and more. Save it for when you are camping, maybe, because it is a long piece.

But it is quite insightful. It made me think hard about some of my philosophies and feelings:

When I build items for my store I don't think about what the market wants, I think about what I feel like building. If I sell enough to cover my expenses, I'm happy.

I think most Hunts have become less about the fun and more about the accumulation of boxes that are never opened. Recently I tried to discuss the quality of the great prizes from the Solange holiday hunt and quite a number of girls admitted they haven't opened or looked at the prizes from the 2007 hunt, let alone the 2008 one. A large number of people I've asked couldn't tell me what many of the prizes were from my last two hunts. A shame because some of them came to my store and bought the prize that they won.

More prizes from chairs should be transferable but not copyable. Many of you know that I'll bump chairs when I have the time and then try to give the prize to the person that announced it in chat. Right now I have more clothes than should be healthy to own and I can afford to buy most anything I want. My building skills satisfy my needs for the most part and I feel good when I give money to someone more clever and skilled for the work they put into something I want. So I count my time as valuable in the freebie versus paybie war.
At one point in this life I found myself devoting so much time to freebies and the acquisition of treasure that I lost track of what was really valuable. My Friend list was filled with other freebie fanatics and little else. Today I have very few folks in Friends just for the freebies and that is usually just for Crew business. I didn't realize that until Dot's article. We all find a niche to fill. What is yours? How have freebies changed your Second Life?

1 comments:

Serenity Semple said...

Well I've been with SL a long ass time (like at the point back when they asked everyone who was playing to sign on all at once to test the serveres - yes that really happened and things didn't crash). But none the less I started with nothing and got L$ from kind furries to finally get an av.

Yeah that means no L$ camping, not really any freebs besides what was in the library. Once things started shaping with lucky chairs (you were there with me when a couple crew members were in the FIRST ever lucky chair group). It all seemed to start there, then that died, I made a new group to support it. Then PopFuzz's lucky board majig came out and the crew was born.

This really shaped me because I felt like I was doing something good. I was helping people outside of getting paid, I got to meet so many new people and places that I couldn't stop. As you know now the crew has become what it has and I think while we hit many a road bumps it's a been a fruit worth the squeeze.

While on the other paw, I think a lot of people overanalyze freebs and what not and some toss lots of dirty insults. But in all actuality I probably wouldn'tve found out about these places with a lil incentive like a freeb and thanks to those I've spent tons at new places, made more friends, and so on and so forth.

Sorry for the long post but overall it has changed me I think for the better. I enjoy what I do (which is one thing I think builders should do is make what they want don't worry about what everyone else wants) and I really hope that everyone else is growing for the better out there or learns to do so.

Thanks for the good post, I enjoy leaving meaningful comments when I can. ^^